Monday, September 2, 2013

Brother Logan

Heavy cotton ball clouds
with flat gray bellies
move over me
the sky runs deep blue
in all directions
reflecting the acute emotional condition
of my heart
I’m sprawled out naked on a cot
actually, I’m naked all but my underwear
sweating in the late summer sun
the clouds scattered in clumps
roaming the heavens
you’re up there
in the middle of it all
at least I would like to think that
while I’m still down here
with the serial killers and the housewives
holding down the fort
reading a paperback novel
adapted from the 1980’s 
Hollywood blockbuster flick
Lethal Weapon
and all that runs through my damaged skull
is Danny Glover’s voice imploring over and over,
“Riggs! Riggs!”
my hangover two days old now
slowly coming out of the whiskey coma
it was the other night
when I missed a late call
concerning my friend
who was dead
and not coming to my senses
until late the next morning
jumping up naked from my bed
clutching my aggressively lamentable head
dry mouth motioning
“Fuck! Fuck!”
strange telephone number miss call
on my cell phone
feeling for the lever
to stop this ride
but you always told me that
the ride is the only thing going
but I can’t make 
any more sense out of
rushing down to the funeral home
and finding you there
as the booze tore through my brain
a fiery freight train
and a flash flood of tears 
raged down my face
but I pulled it together
enough to function
did what needed to be done
and then, two days later
I’m covered in tanning lotion
laid out under the death rays
of a Mojave sun
reading Lethal Weapon in paperback
drinking water
fuck the fuck out of ever
raising whiskey to my lips again
panting and shouting,
“Riggs! Riggs!”
as I sweat into an old army cot
positioned in the dirt
in the middle of the open desert
and this is how
I’m coping.

I miss you brother Logan . . .



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